


For the Scars

by philalethia



Series: Show and Noise [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bloodplay, Explicit Sexual Content, Kink Negotiation, Knifeplay, M/M, Painplay, Sadomasochism, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 08:45:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1260187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philalethia/pseuds/philalethia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock starts an observational study, and John indulges him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: There is explicit description in this story of a person being hurt, and particularly cut, for (consensual) sexual pleasure. If you think this may be distressing or triggering for you, I strongly advise you not to read.
> 
> Reading the previous stories in the series is recommended but not necessary.

John woke one morning to find that Sherlock had sellotaped a row of four photographs—all close-ups of wounds in various stages of healing—to the wall above the sofa, and was now seated beneath them, typing rapidly on his computer, the telltale wrinkle of deep concentration between his brows. It was a testament to how very close up the photos were that John didn’t immediately recognise the wounds as his own.

When he did, somehow the first thought that occurred was “You took these with your phone?” Because Sherlock had only ever taken photographs of John’s marks with his mobile, yet these were crisp and clear, not at all like the sorts of photos John’s own mobile took.

Then he recalled that that was perhaps not what he should be most concerned about and adjusted accordingly.

“What the bloody hell is all this?”

“Observational study,” said Sherlock, calmly, as though there was nothing odd at all about covering the wall of their flat with evidence of John’s masochistic inclinations. His typing didn’t slow, nor did his gaze waver from the computer screen. “I’m investigating the effects of location and type of blade on your healing rate.”

“And that requires… _this_? Sherlock, we’re not decorating the flat in pictures of my bleeding body parts.”

The corner of Sherlock’s lip twitched upwards for a split second, but still he didn’t glance up. “Pity, that. They do brighten the room.”

“Sherlock,” said John, being sure to lower his voice in a clear warning.

With a huff, Sherlock cast his gaze to the ceiling as though praying for patience, and then set his computer aside. “I was performing side-by-side comparisons. Would you rather I scattered them about the floor? Or perhaps you’d prefer I replace them with crime-scene photos of mutilated corpses? I notice you’ve never complained when I put those up on the wall.”

John rubbed his forehead, sighing. It had been nearly three weeks since Sherlock had had a decent case, he reminded himself. He should probably have just been happy there didn’t appear to be any more bullet holes.

“Right,” he decided. “Fine. Just make sure you take them down before Mrs Hudson comes up and sees them.”

*

Actually, John reflected later, it could have been worse.

For one, it was the first experiment Sherlock had begun that didn’t disrupt some aspect of John’s life. After all, scarcely a day went by anymore when he didn’t have some healing sex injury, most often cuts and scratches, and since the very beginning, Sherlock had seemed fascinated by the wounds he left on John’s body, following their healing with a single-mindedness and devotion that was nearly religious in its intensity.

So John was accustomed to being regularly photographed. That these photographs now appeared, in absurdly good quality, on the wall above the sofa was a small thing, he supposed. And it was certainly better than mutilated corpses.

“You know it _is_ my body,” he said one evening, while Sherlock snapped a series of pictures of his latest wounds: three cuts in a neat row just below his left elbow. They were fresh, still seeping blood, and the scalpel Sherlock had used was still on the floor where he had shoved it aside. “And I’ve been cut with loads of knives in my life, in sexual situations and not. I know how I heal.”

Sherlock shook his head, peering at the screen of his phone. He still had spit and semen all over his chin, the impatient berk, and John’s trousers were still open, his pants shoved down, and his prick hanging limp and satisfied. Sherlock hadn’t even come yet, hadn’t even stood from where he was knelt between John’s open thighs, before he had been reaching for his phone and telling John to _hold still, John, for God’s sake, stay put_.

“Anecdotal evidence,” Sherlock said. “Hardly sufficient. Now _hold still_.”

John, who’d thought he was being still, did his best to keep his arm utterly motionless, palm up on the arm of his chair, until Sherlock had finished. Then, when Sherlock set the phone aside and got a hand between his own legs, fumbling at his zip, John let his arm drop onto his thigh so that Sherlock had a perfect view of it in all its bleeding, aching glory when he began to slump forwards, leaning into John’s knee as he tossed himself off.

“I want to touch them,” Sherlock said. He stared at the cuts, the streaks of blood, as though they would disappear if he so much as blinked. “Can I touch them?”

“Course.” John felt splendidly indulgent. If Sherlock had asked to suck on his cock some more, John probably would have let him, no matter how torturous it felt so soon after his last orgasm. “You can do more than that if you want.”

Sherlock did want, so with a hand on his head, John coaxed Sherlock’s open mouth to his arm. The cuts stung and throbbed as Sherlock pressed long, sucking kisses to them, tracing each one with his tongue and lapping away the drying blood.

Soon, though, he was panting too much to continue, so he simply rested his lips against John’s forearm while he stroked himself furiously, moaning. Finally, he came with a breathy “oh,” shuddering while John stroked his hair.

*

The next day there were three new photographs on the wall, which John saw while he was sitting down with his afternoon tea.

“Any theories so far?” he asked Sherlock, who was in his armchair across from John, curled in what looked to be a severely uncomfortable position: head propped on one chair arm and his feet dangling over the other.

“I never theorise without all the facts,” Sherlock said primly.

Which was utter rubbish, just Sherlock parroting what he so often said to John during cases—and it was always rubbish then as well.

“Any observations of note, then?” John asked instead, biting down on a smile.

Sherlock lifted his head, peering at the wall of photos as though he honestly needed the reminder. “A razor leaves the most long-lasting marks. The scars on your thigh from the first time you let me cut you are testament to that. Although a scalpel when used on your arm seems—”

“To be fair,” John cut in, “you press harder with a razor.”

“Harder?” Sherlock, sounding positively scandalised, shot John a look of such indignation that John began to giggle. “I apply precisely the same amount of pressure regardless of what I am using.”

“Bollocks. You press harder with a razor, which is why it bleeds the most and leaves longer-lasting scars. Probably on some subconscious level, you think of a razor blade as being safer than a scalpel or a proper knife. Which is fine, it’s….”

John realised that the indignation on Sherlock’s face was fading, gradually being replaced by dawning horror, so he decided he’d best leave off. He grasped his cup of tea and lifted it to his lips to shut himself up.

“Ridiculous,” Sherlock declared after a moment. “Obviously I—”

_Bollocks_ , John didn’t say—and took another sip of tea to ensure he didn’t—but Sherlock grimaced as though he’d heard it all the same, then promptly flopped onto his other side, facing the back of the armchair. Practically radiating stroppiness, he curled himself even tighter, so that John could see the notches of his spine even through his pyjama top and dressing gown.

“I could be wrong,” John forced himself to say, although he was sure he wasn’t mistaken in the slightest.

“Biased,” Sherlock muttered sulkily. “A razor’s your _favourite_ , after all.”

Was it? If it was, it was only because these days a razor blade meant that John would hurt more, bleed more, and Sherlock would practically cling to him at the sight, desperate for anything John would give him.

“Yes.” John closed his eyes, thought of Sherlock kissing a fresh wound, getting splotches of blood all over his full, soft lips. “I suppose it is.”

*

Two days later, Sherlock had added eight more photographs to the wall, until it looked more like a shrine to John’s masochism than anything.

“New case, is it?” Mrs Hudson asked when she’d finally seen it.

“Experiment,” answered Sherlock. He’d dragged his armchair close enough that he could use the sofa cushion as a footstool, and sometimes he spent hours staring at the rows of photos, his eyes narrowed and his hands clasped beneath his chin.

“Oh, isn’t that nice,” Mrs Hudson said, sounding only politely interested, and that was that.

“You vastly underestimate her, you know,” Sherlock told John when she had returned to her own flat. “Her own proclivities being what they are, knife play is hardly likely to faze her.”

“Sherlock,” John said, grimacing, “please don’t ever tell me about our landlady’s ‘proclivities.’”

He sat on the sofa just beside Sherlock’s bare feet, and Sherlock promptly lifted one and brought it down on the other side of John’s hip so that John was trapped between his legs. He didn’t so much as glance at John as he did so, but there was such an easy affection and an acceptance of John’s presence in the motion that it made something swell in John’s chest. He stroked along the veins of Sherlock’s feet with both thumbs and silently forgave him for plastering their perversity on the wall for their landlady to see.

“How old were you,” Sherlock asked suddenly, “when you discovered you had a penchant for pain?”

A bit of an odd question, John thought. In part because it _was_ a question. Sherlock made loads of questions-disguised-as-deductions and questions-disguised-as-random-statements, but he so rarely asked anything straightforwardly.

“It was a gradual discovery,” John said. “And it would take a bloody long time to go through it all, so I’d rather not do, if that’s all right with you.”

It wasn’t a terribly interesting story either. A few girlfriends and boyfriends with a tendency to bite or scratch, one encounter with a dominatrix that had begun awfully but ended all right when they’d both finally understood that all he wanted was pain. Sherlock never seemed to care about the parts of John’s day-to-day life that didn’t involve him, after all, so John doubted he would care about the whole of John’s sexual history.

Sherlock said nothing. Seconds later, his toes began to wriggle insistently, and John realised he’d stopped his gentle stroking of Sherlock’s feet and hastily started up again. Sherlock’s toes promptly stilled.

“What about you?” John wondered. “When did you discover you had a ‘penchant’ for causing pain?”

Sherlock cocked his head, giving John a long, thoughtful look. “When I saw the scars on your leg from one of your former partners.” _Obviously_ , said his tone, although it wasn’t obvious to John.

“Ah,” John said, surprised. It didn’t fit, really, not with how eager Sherlock was: like he’d been craving the opportunity to hurt someone for a long, long time and couldn’t get enough of it now he’d finally tasted it. Desire that strong didn’t grow overnight… or perhaps for Sherlock it did? “Okay.”

Sherlock’s lips stretched thin, and he didn’t speak again for a long while.

*

It surprised John how very little attention clients paid to the assortment of photos above the sofa. The first had glanced over them, and seemed far more interested in the bison skull above the desk and the framed taxidermy collection on the mantel.

The second had lingered longer over the photographs, her gaze flickering over them one by one, but then she’d seemed to dismiss them and sat on the sofa without a word about them.

“It bothers you,” said Sherlock later. “The photos. It bothers you when people see them.”

He was standing in the doorway between the en suite and the bedroom, messing about on his phone, unusually patient while he waited his turn to investigate the healing wounds on John’s arm.

“You realise, quite a lot of people see no difference between consensual S&M and abuse. You could actually be arrested,” John answered, paying Sherlock only some of his attention. The rest was devoted to his injuries as he cleaned them over the sink.

He thought they might not need a bandage much longer. All three cuts were scabbed over now, although still pink and slightly puffy. They stung a bit, though only if John moved his arm a certain way or rubbed it against something—which he sometimes did on purpose, probably more often than he should, always within Sherlock’s sight just because he liked the way it made Sherlock’s eyes go half-lidded and dark.

“Oh, please,” Sherlock scoffed, “it wouldn’t come to that. And even if it did, the charges wouldn’t stick. Mycroft would see to it. One of the few benefits of his company: he’s very good at making things like that disappear.”

John tossed the used cotton wool pad into the bin and raised his arm, jumper sleeve still rolled up to his bicep, while the skin dried. “It’s fine,” he said slowly. “The photos. Well, they’re not _fine_ , exactly, but….”

He wasn’t sure what they were. It was a bit like the kitchen, he supposed. He wasn’t keen on finding decapitated heads in the fridge and bacteria in the milk and mould in the cupboard just beside the plates, and he shouted at Sherlock about it weekly, but he’d be bloody _furious_ if just anyone came in and tried to tell him how revolting it all was.

“Hardly worth discussing anyway,” said Sherlock. His eyes were still glued to his mobile, his thumb swiping rapidly across the screen. “As I’ve arranged them, the photos are clearly visual documentation of the healing process. Most people couldn’t wrap their tiny little minds around the truth of what I do to you.”

_What I do to you_. Christ, that sounded sinister—in an erotic sort of way. John licked his lips, suppressing a shiver, and then shoved the thought away.

“Right, well,” he said, and extended his arm towards Sherlock. “Here you are, then. All yours.”

Sherlock practically lunged forwards—there was the impatient twat he knew so well, John thought fondly—and latched onto John’s arm, tugging it greedily towards himself. John, by now very familiar with this process, let himself be manhandled like a mouldable doll, his arm lifted and twisted and angled carefully until the light hit the skin just right.

When John had been positioned to his liking, though, Sherlock paused, then set his phone aside and simply stared, tracing a slow rectangle around the row of cuts with his fingers. The corners of his mouth turned down, as though he was displeased with the way they were healing.

“You could cut over them,” John said on a whim, and Sherlock’s shoulders actually jumped in surprise. “When they heal a bit more, that is,” John clarified. “Cutting over scars leaves longer-lasting marks. It’d make them a bit more permanent.”

Sherlock stared. The sort of stare like he was mentally peeling back John’s scalp, chipping away at his skull, and having a thorough hands-on look at John’s frontal lobe. And there was nothing for John to do but try to stay still until he was finished.

“Did all of your former partners share your interests?” Sherlock asked.

It was such a departure from John’s thoughts, from the whole discussion they’d just been having, that it took him a moment to translate the words into meaningful speech.

“Sorry, my… the pain thing, you mean? God no.” John laughed lightly, picturing some of his old girlfriends and boyfriends, how very surprised they’d have been if John had requested that they hurt him. “No, um. It’s a kink, not a fetish—I don’t _need_ it to enjoy sex. And besides, a relationship’s made up of a lot more than just sex, so…. Yeah, no.”

Sherlock made a low thoughtful sound and again ran the tips of his long, thin fingers over John’s skin, this time sweeping over the scabs and the pink skin surrounding them, pausing once to press down firmly with his nails. John shivered a bit and closed his eyes a moment to savour the teasing nip of pain.

“I see,” Sherlock said. His voice was level, his expression impassive except for a very small wrinkle between his eyebrows.

Then he let go of John’s hand, retrieved his phone, and began to take his photographs.

*

“You prefer a stinging sensation,” said Sherlock.

Odd time for a conversation, John thought. He lifted his chin from between Sherlock’s thighs, where he’d been teasing at Sherlock’s perineum, and wiped his mouth on Sherlock’s arse cheek.

“I get off on being cut,” he answered. “Of course I like a good sting. Don’t pretend as though you hadn’t already deduced that.”

He pressed a firm, brief kiss to Sherlock’s cheek just to watch the skin jiggle, giggling when Sherlock huffed and squirmed. And he would have spread Sherlock open and licked him some more, but then Sherlock was speaking again.

“Floggers aren’t generally considered ‘stingy.’”

With a sigh, John circled his thumbs longingly on either of Sherlock’s upper thighs, just below the swell of his bum. He’d been thinking of this all day. Diagnosing viruses and flu, and glimpsing his healing cuts every time he pushed up his sleeves to wash his hands, and imagining how when he went home he would spread Sherlock out on the bed like a feast and devour him until he sobbed. Of course Sherlock had other plans.

“Depends,” he said. “A decent rubber flogger can be quite stingy actually. Or it can to me, anyway; people experience pain differently. But generally no. Your leather one is probably more thuddy.”

“Then it’s rubbish,” Sherlock said. “I’ll bin it.”

“Thuddy isn’t necessarily bad. We could give it a go. Maybe _you’ll_ like it.”

“Hardly. I’ll bin it.”

John raised his head, although he could only see the back of Sherlock’s head and the long expanse of his back, which was bare and pale and enviably smooth. He was gorgeous, John thought, gorgeous and utterly unfathomable. He wondered what was going on in that brilliant mind.

“Canes are generally stingy, yes?”

“Again, it depends,” John answered. “Material and thickness and all that. But the one you have? Yes. I imagine that would sting quite badly.”

“When your arm heals, then, I want to use the cane on you.” Sherlock’s hips did a sort of cheerful shimmy that made John ache to taste him again.

“Mm. You can use the cane on me today if you want.”

John spread Sherlock’s arse cheeks slightly, just enough that he could see Sherlock’s lovely pink hole and the spattering of dark hair around it, still damp with John’s saliva. And he would have happily lowered his head and made it even wetter, but Sherlock went tense beneath him, the muscles in his thighs absolutely rigid.

John left off immediately, sat back so he wasn’t touching Sherlock at all any longer. Sherlock usually liked being licked—liked _anything_ to do with his arse, really—but that didn’t mean he wanted it now. “Sherlock?”

“You said there should be a sufficient healing time between injuries.” Sherlock’s voice was sharp, accusatory, and if he’d been looking at John—though he still hadn’t so much as lifted his head from the pillow—John suspected his eyes would be narrowed in suspicion. “You’ve never let me hurt you again so soon after the last. You don’t fancy limping round London because I’ve beaten, cut, bitten, and scratched every inch of you—your words _exactly._ ”

John had said that. And had meant it at the time. The difference, he supposed, was that now he trusted Sherlock a lot more. He followed John’s instructions and didn’t get carried away and didn’t ever leave John in so much pain he couldn’t function normally.

“Yes, well, _you_ said we would indulge this ‘interest’ for just a bit and then move on,” John reminded him. “And it’s been, what, four, five months, and neither of us seems to be getting bored of you hurting me. Things change.”

For a long moment, Sherlock said nothing, although his muscles gradually relaxed until he was nearly boneless again, sinking into the duvet. Finally, he sighed, “Yes. All right. That’s… fine. I misunderstood.”

That wasn’t quite it, of course. John had changed the rules on a whim, hadn’t even thought before he’d done so, and that wasn’t good, not when you were playing with S&M. “I’m sorry,” he said, and might have said more. But Sherlock sighed as though his apology was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard, then tilted his hips up, a clear request for John to get on with it again already.

After a moment of deliberation, John complied. Settling back down between Sherlock’s thighs, he spread Sherlock’s cheeks wide and then dove in straight for his arsehole. It fluttered under his tongue as Sherlock tried to relax, to let him in, and John ate at him slowly, gently, managing to dip the very tip of his tongue inside, where Sherlock was so warm and soft that John’s head spun a bit at the thought.

Sherlock moaned quietly, hiked his right leg up the duvet near his chest, and—when that apparently wasn’t enough—reached around with his left hand and buried his fingers in John’s hair, nails scraping the scalp.

It wasn’t generally John’s sort of thing, having his hair pulled, but since it felt all right now, he allowed it, let Sherlock hold him close as he squirmed and rutted, tried to fuck himself on John’s tongue.

“You’ll let me cut you, then? Today, that is. Oh, god, I want to cut you again,” Sherlock said, breathless, his voice half muffled by the pillow. “Ah… somewhere else this time, not a limb. And then, oh… then I want you to fuck me. Is… is that acceptable?”

John pulled back, licking his lips. “Mm. All right. We can do that.” And he lowered his head for another taste.

*

On his back in Sherlock’s bed with Sherlock sitting astride him, impaled on his cock for the first time, John felt unusually tender and accommodating. Even with the frankly obscene amount of lubricant they had used and how perfectly still John had been as Sherlock eased himself down, Sherlock’s face still hadn’t lost that pinched look of discomfort. So when he asked, a fresh razor in one hand, what he was allowed to do, John didn’t hesitate to tell him, “Whatever you want.”

Apparently, Sherlock wanted to carve a Y incision across his chest, beginning at either of his collarbones and ending just below his ribs.

Not a proper one, of course. He didn’t cut nearly deep enough for that. Nor was he as quick and smooth as someone doing a proper autopsy. He lingered, inching the razor blade along John’s chest and watching the skin split apart with an open, hungry expression. The blood welled in the fresh cuts, made channels of deep red along John’s skin, but none of it spilled over, even after the Y was finished and John sucked in breath after breath while Sherlock rolled his hips in tiny, testing increments. Pain made a thin but noticeable cloud in his mind, and he began to shake with the effort of holding himself still.

“Ugh,” Sherlock said with a grimace. “Tedious. This is awful, John. Why aren’t you moving? What is the point of fucking if you only lie there instead of taking what you wa—”

Gritting his teeth, John flipped them so that Sherlock was on his back, John between his open thighs. His prick slipped out in the switch—although the condom thankfully stayed in place—but then Sherlock tipped his bottom up and it slid back in easily.

“ _Finally_ ,” Sherlock said. And though John suspected he’d meant to sound aloof and haughty, he only sounded blissful—even more so when the Y-shaped wound began to drip. He arched up, lunged for John’s chest with a moan that was nothing less than rapturous, and curled his arms and legs around John’s back, tracing the cuts with his tongue.

“I was trying to be gentle,” John ground out, grabbing fistfuls of the bedsheets beneath them, “but if you’re going to be a tart about it….”

“Please,” Sherlock murmured, kissing John’s chest, nuzzling the upper V of the incisions, making them throb and grow hot with a fresh flood of pain. “Please, yes, oh.”

So John fucked him. Hard enough that the entire bed quaked, the headboard banged against the wall, and Sherlock’s head fell back as he wailed. There was blood on his lips, his nose, his cheek, even his chest, and he looked gorgeous; he looked perfect. He was made to have John’s blood on him, John thought.

“Nails,” John grunted, and Sherlock responded immediately, curving his fingers and clawing at John’s shoulder blades.

Fresh pain bloomed, and the cuts on his chest pulsed and sang. His whole body felt tense and tight, capable of shattering, and he pressed a wet kiss to Sherlock’s forehead, imagining the swollen red marks Sherlock was leaving along his back.

“Teeth,” he said, and Sherlock raised his head, panted for a moment against the join between John’s neck and shoulder, and then bit down, muffling his cries into John’s skin.

John would suck him off afterwards, he decided, and give Sherlock full permission to absolutely _ravage_ John’s back. Maybe see if he could keep a finger in Sherlock’s mouth to give him something to gnaw on.

John began to come moments later, letting loose a string of hissed swears, while Sherlock held him tightly, gasping a “yes” into his shoulder for every pulse of his cock.

*

The next morning, John woke alone. Most days, it wouldn’t have been unusual, but the day after Sherlock had been allowed to hurt him, it was almost unheard of. Sherlock typically relished the opportunity to inspect and poke and tease while John’s limbs were still sleep-heavy, his thoughts sluggish. John wondered if Greg had called with a case during the night, but he doubted Sherlock would have let him sleep through that.

Yawning, he crawled out of bed, then wrapped himself in Sherlock’s wool dressing gown (which was embarrassingly long on John, all the way to his feet, but it was warm and smelled like Sherlock) and shuffled to the sitting room.

There, he found Sherlock standing atop the sofa, ripping the photographs from the wall (along with tiny bits of the wallpaper) and tossing them on the floor, muttering furiously to himself.

“Something the matter?” John asked.

“ _Wrong_ ,” Sherlock spat, spinning around to look at him. His eyes were worryingly manic, the way they got sometimes when he hadn’t had a case in ages and his mind was just beginning to race out of control. “My method, my _thinking_ , has been wrong from the very beginning.”

He scrubbed his fingers through his hair and then stepped, utterly gracelessly, off the sofa and right into the haphazard stack of photos. John thought it likely he would slip and fall flat on his face, but he somehow managed to avoid it.

“There are far too many unpredictable, uncontrollable variables,” he continued, stalking closer. “I’ll need to start again. Will you let me start again? I need to think. I need to—”

“Sherlock,” John said, when they were close enough that he could lay his hands on Sherlock’s biceps. He stroked them soothingly, keeping his voice soft. “Calm down. It’s fine. Look, sit here for a bit, and I’ll make us some tea, all right?”

Sherlock didn’t sit, though. He swayed into John’s arms with a deep inhale and then seemed to finally _see_ John for the first time. He plucked at the dressing gown draped over John’s shoulders before his attention was drawn to John’s chest, where the gown hung open slightly, revealing the bandages covering his fresh Y-shaped wounds.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, slipping a hand beneath the wool and putting light pressure on the cut that began below John’s left collarbone, only inches below his old bullet scar.

John chuckled. “Oh yes. Stings like hell every time I so much as breathe.”

Sherlock said nothing, barely blinking as he watched his hand move beneath the dressing gown. For a moment, he looked as though he had something to say, then seemed to dismiss the thought entirely. To John’s surprise, his eyes had already lost most of their manic look. Usually, that process took hours or even days of John being calm and long-suffering whilst Sherlock seemed intent on verbally vivisecting everything in his path.

“What about you?” John recalled abruptly. “How do you feel? Any pain?”

Clearly distracted, Sherlock shook his head. “Minor discomfort. Unimportant, easily ignored.”

“Good. That’s… good.”

Sherlock pressed harder, stroking along the wound. If he wasn’t careful, it’d reopen and start bleeding soon, but he didn’t seem much to care. Nor did John, for that matter.

“You like this,” said Sherlock, eyes darting between John’s face and his chest. “You like the aftermath even more than you like being hurt.”

“Mm, yes, well-spotted.” It wasn’t just his chest stinging either. The muscles in his legs and abdomen ached from the fucking. He felt invulnerable and well-shagged and like he wouldn’t mind having another go right here on the sitting room floor.

Strange, he thought. Like he’d told Sherlock, he’d had relationships without this—perfectly satisfying relationships in which John had never been hurt once during sex—and yet he couldn’t imagine it now. It sounded so disappointing, so boring. How had he managed?

“You aren’t concerned,” Sherlock said suddenly, and John started, realising he’d lost himself in his own head for a bit. Meanwhile, Sherlock was staring down at him, wearing a scowl so deep it seemed to have been carved there. “Why aren’t you concerned?” he continued. “You have, twelve times now, given a high-functioning sociopath a weapon and let me do what I want to you.”

John was rolling his eyes before Sherlock had even finished. “Don’t even start on that. No, Sherlock, I mean it. It’s too early for that ‘high-functioning sociopath’ rot. No, that’s exactly what it is, and you know it. Utter _rot_.”

John stepped back, gathering the dressing gown more tightly around himself and lifting his chin. A lovely little thrill shot through him when Sherlock blinked and lowered his own chin as though in deference.

“Now,” John said sternly, “I’ve just been robbed of my usual morning-after poking and prodding, and I’m not starting the day without it. So you’re going to grab your phone, follow me to your bedroom, and then I’m going to take these bandages off and let you take as many photos as you like, since you didn’t get any last night. Because your study might be flawed or whatever it is, but _I_ was rather enjoying at least the whole you-taking-my-picture bit. Is that understood?”

Sherlock’s scowl broke into a smile, albeit a small one, barely a twitch of his facial muscles unless you knew what to look for—and John did.

“Perfectly,” he said. “And my phone is already in the bedroom, I believe, so. Lead the way.”


End file.
